Miles Brown (first row, second from left) with members of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound at the Grammy Awards red carpet. The ensemble won the award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Donnacha Dennehy’s Land of Winter.

Making Grammy Award-winning music

Article by Megan M.F. Everhart Photos by Christopher Ginn and Paul Melnikow February 12, 2026

UD professor brings home a 2026 Grammy Award with the ensemble Alarm Will Sound

Miles Brown thought his ensemble Alarm Will Sound had the makings for a Grammy award-winning recording with Radio Rewrite, based on themes from the band Radiohead written by contemporary classical composer Steve Reich. It had name recognition and popular appeal, but it didn’t get the attention Brown expected.

Their Grammy moment came this year instead, when Alarm Will Sound took home the 2026 Grammy award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Donnacha Dennehy’s Land of Winter.

“You just never know what’s going to hit,” said Brown, associate professor of string bass and jazz in the University of Delaware School of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences. “You put stuff out there into the world and hope it comes back.”

That’s just one of the lessons Brown took away from the Grammy experience.

It was the first nomination and win for the 22-member ensemble, which is committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s new music. In addition to Reich’s Radio Rewrite, they have premiered music by Meredith Monk, Tyshawn Sorey, David Lang, John Adams, Mary Kouyoumdjian, John Luther Adams, Marcos Balter and Augusta Read Thomas.

Brown said the group’s mission has always been to collaborate with composers and present new ideas about music.

“As teachers, it's our responsibility to bring as much breadth of the world into the studio, and as much experience as we can,” said Brown, who plays the bass. “It’s not just being a good musician. You have to work well with an ensemble and understand the music business. I have insight to give my students.”

Brown is an associate professor of string bass and jazz, as well as a member of UD’s Faculty Jazz Ensemble in the School of Music.

Beyond the Red Carpet

Audiences may associate the Grammy Awards with pop superstars and red carpet fashions, but the Recording Academy bestowed almost 100 awards on Feb. 1, covering a multitude of genres, from the coveted Album of the Year to Best Spoken Word Album, which is how former president Barack Obama received his two Grammy Awards.

And while the red carpet was an exciting new experience, what surprised Brown was seeing the machinery behind the awards.

“It was kind of crazy to see the inner workings, all the press, the media outlets, and how publicists lead the whole thing,” he said.

Even before the ceremony itself, Brown learned about the nomination and voting process.

“Members are only allowed to vote in three categories, so it’s more of an honor that we were not only nominated, but that enough people voted for us to win,” he said.

Harmonic landscape

Land of Winter is a 50-minute piece in 12 movements, which each represent a month of the year and Denney’s interpretation of light in his native Ireland.

“It is sort of a sonic representation of how light gets filtered in the atmosphere, when the sun rises and sets each day,” Brown said.

He described Land of Winter as an “beautiful, unfamiliar harmonic landscape” for listeners, because Dennehy composes in a system called “just intonation.”

“Without getting too technical, it’s the way pitches occur naturally, for example when you divide a string into halves, thirds, quarters, etc. It’s based on the harmonic series and is different from the 12 equally-spaced notes of the piano,” he said. “It provides the listener a different experience than the majority of music we hear today, which is based on this equalized system.”

Donnacha Dennehy found inspiration in the play between light and time: "It is the varying quality of light that truly demarcates the seasons, from the shorter days of grey or piercing light in the winter to the warmer but mercurial light of summer days that at solstice stretch almost to midnight.” (Credit: director: Hugh O'Conor; editor: Hugh Chaloner; starring Mikel Murfi)

Alarm Will Sound - Donnacha Dennehy's 'Land of Winter: XII. November' (Official Video): youtube.com/watch?v=uKB6lxYhRAY

This takes the musician out of the normal orchestral mindset and requires exquisite technique.

“In particular, my part as the bass player is extremely difficult,” Brown said.

Some passages push the technical limits of the instrument, especially in the use of high harmonics on the lowest string, where precision leaves very little margin for error. Brown explained that even the most accomplished musicians may have trouble physically playing the notes.

Limitless voices

Brown said the future looks bright for the award-winning group.

“We’re still going to focus on what got us here in the first place, which is a lot of collaboration and working to uplift composers’ voices,” he said. “As many people as there are in the world, that’s as many possible musical voices exist too. There are no limits to the possibilities of what you can achieve with music.”

With members spread across the country from South Carolina to California, Alarm Will Sound perform together only a few times each year.

Local audiences can see them perform their American Stories on March 13, 2026, at the Zellerbach Theatre in Philadelphia.

Listen to excerpts of Land of Winter and other recordings on the group’s website: https://www.alarmwillsound.com/